Ultra-long-living magnons in the quantum limit

Abstract

Solid-state platforms based on bosonic quasiparticles offer a compelling route toward on-chip quantum information technologies scalable to nanometer dimensions. Coherence time, a key figure of merit for any quantum system, is fundamentally limited by the lifetime of quasiparticles that store quantum information. For magnons - bosonic excitations of collective magnetization dynamics - it has long been reported that their lifetime does not exceed a few hundred nanoseconds, placing a stringent constraint on their use in quantum architectures. Here, we demonstrate magnon lifetimes exceeding 18 μs. Experiments performed on single-crystal yttrium iron garnet spheres cooled to 30 mK reveal relaxation times of short-wavelength magnons nearly two orders of magnitude longer than previously observed. These findings overturn the established view of magnon dissipation limits, positioning magnons as viable, long-lived information carriers for solid-state quantum computing.